Everyone knows that Captain Jean-Luc Picard loves drinking Earl Grey tea more than any other caffeinated drink, but what this essay presupposes is: maybe he doesn’t? In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Picard certainly talks about Earl Grey tea more than Spock says “Live long and prosper” in the original series, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Picard actually prefers it to other types of caffeine. Instead, it’s very possible that the Earl Grey thing is an affectation, something Picard drinks because it became part of his persona, rather than something he actually prefers—kind of like how Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes is forced to wear the deerstalker cap in Sherlock, because “it’s a Sherlock Holmes hat.”
Let’s begin by reading Picard’s mind to find out what he really likes. Come on Jean-Luc, tell us what you want, what you really really want! In the episode “Attached,” Picard and Doctor Crusher have pseudo-telepathic devices implanted in their brains where they can read each other’s feelings and thoughts. Guess what? Crusher discovers Picard loves coffee. Here’s the scene:
CRUSHER: Remember that Vulcan dish I promised you for breakfast? I was just. (PAUSES, GETS A TELEPATHIC MESSAGE) You hate having breakfast with me!
PICARD: That’s not true.
CRUSHER: Yes, it is. When I said breakfast, I heard you say I hate that.
PICARD: That’s not quite what I meant.
CRUSHER: Well, then what did you mean?
PICARD: It’s just that I don’t like—
CRUSHER: What I’ve been choosing for breakfast recently.
PICARD: You see, I think that breakfast should be a simple meal and recently you’ve been ordering these elaborate things.
CRUSHER: Coffee and croissants, that’s all you really want, isn’t it? Coffee and croissants. Well why didn’t you just say so?
PICARD: I didn’t think it was important. You don’t like those elaborate meals either.
CRUSHER: No, I usually prefer something simple myself but I thought you might enjoy more variety. Well, I guess it’s coffee and croissants for both of us from now on.
Okay, so it’s unclear if Picard and Crusher start having coffee and croissants for breakfast exclusively after this episode, but can we talk about the simple fact that in the ONLY episode in which someone reads Picard’s mind, we learn that he craves not Earl Grey tea, but… regular coffee? I know there have been some bombshells in the history of Star Trek, but this one seems to easily be the biggest. If Picard only pretends to like having the complicated breakfasts with Crusher, then perhaps he pretends to like other things, too, for example, Earl Grey?
This leads to the thorny question of how often Picard actually drinks Earl Grey tea in Star Trek canon. There are 179 episodes of The Next Generation, and Picard is often holding a drink that could be Earl Grey tea but isn’t always specifically identified as such. You can find some compilation videos out there that claim Picard only drinks Earl Grey 6 or 7 times but these are slightly erroneous, and also ignore that it’s almost impossible to document every instance of Picard holding a drink in the whole show because that would require a tea-focused rewatch from start-to-finish.
That said, after scanning through scripts, and re-watching a healthy chunk of TNG; here is an incomplete—but instructive—list of episodes and films where Picard is either 100-percent drinking Earl Grey tea, drinking something else out of a cup that could be tea (but maybe coffee) or Earl Grey is mentioned or discussed outright.
- “Encounter at Farpoint”: Picard drinks tea in his first formal conference with Riker. (Earl Grey is not mentioned, so it could be coffee. Maybe.)
- “Where No One Has Gone Before”: Picard’s “mom” offers him tea on a cart. (Earl Grey is not mentioned.)
- “Contagion”: Picard says “Tea, Earl Grey, hot!” for the first time. (Note: he does not get it! The replicator malfunctions.)
- “Best of Both Worlds”: Picard offers Hanson tea by saying “Earl Grey?”
- “Redemption”: Lursa and B’Etor pour Picard Earl Grey to try and curry favor.
- “The Perfect Mate”: Kamala orders Earl Grey from the replicator for Picard.
- “Lessons”: Picard tries to order Earl Grey late at night but is unable to because the replicators are offline. (Can he not make a boiling pot of water without the replicator. Really? Also, this is the second time Picard not getting tea reveals a major plot point.)
- “Rascals”: Picard—in a child’s body—orders “Tea, Earl Grey, hot!” from the replicator.
- “Journey’s End”: Picard has Earl Grey and sandwiches ready for Admiral Necheyev’s visit.
- “Bloodlines”: Picard offers tea to his “son,” Jason.
- “All Good Things”: Picard orders “Tea, Earl Grey, hot!” TWICE. Once during a flashback to the first mission of the Enterprise and also in a flash-forward to the future at Data’s house, from a cranky maid.
- Deep Space Nine, “Emissary”: Picard has a giant pot of something, probably tea—but maybe coffee—in his meeting with Sisko.
- Generations: Picard’s faux-“wife” in the Nexus offers him a cup of Earl Grey.
- Nemesis: Picard orders “Tea, Earl Grey, hot” from the replicator prior to his subspace call from Admiral Janeway. Picard’s younger clone, Shinzon, also orders “Tea, hot,” later in the film, but does not specify “Earl Grey.”
The biggest takeaway from this list is that the only time Picard orders Earl Grey when he’s alone is in “Lessons.” All the other occasions are connected to meetings or social gatherings. This makes his private tea time kind of an isolated incident. And even in the episode itself, Neela Darren is sort of weirded out that he’s drinking caffeine so late at night. Could this actually not be normal behavior for Picard?
As Star Trek fans, we’re conditioned to think Picard is an Earl Grey fiend and drinks it all the time, but because we only see a small fraction of his private life, we mostly associate the tea with Picard’s professional persona. The fake alien ghost of his mother offering him tea in “Where No One Has Gone Before” suggests that tea was pushed on Jean-Luc at a young age, but it doesn’t follow that he likes it.
What about booze? Picard likes booze. Prior to an alien abduction in the episode “Allegiance” Picard is alone, chilling with something that looks like brandy. And obviously, we know he likes red wine, too. Further, in “Relics” Scotty learns the green brandy he snagged from Ten Forward was obtained for Guinan by Picard. Now, I’m not saying Picard’s refined taste in alcohol proves he doesn’t love tea, that would be insane. But, Picard pounding that shot of green brandy with Scotty does indicate he’s not some dandy English gentleman who can only unwind with a cup of tea, ‘governor. The sophisticated tea-drinking image of Picard might be an image he’s actively trying to project.
Which brings us back to “Attached.” In the same episode, Crusher learns Picard often projects an air of confidence when he’s actually not sure what he’s doing.
CRUSHER: I mean, you’re acting like you know exactly which way to go, but you’re only guessing. Do you do this all the time?
PICARD: No, but there are times when it is necessary for a captain to give the appearance of confidence.
The conclusion? Earl Grey is part of that appearance. He’s sipping it when he jerks Riker around in the very first episode, and he fires-up the Earl Grey every time an big Admiral comes to visit, or when he needs to tell Ben Sisko sorry/not sorry for that time I was a Borg.
If Picard wasn’t the Captain and could choose what he wanted to drink, without having to worry about what everyone thought of him, it seems like he’d be slugging a cup of coffee, just like Janeway in Voyager. Does this make Janeway a more emotionally authentic captain than Picard? Well, maybe, but then again, maybe her coffee addiction is an affectation, too. And with that in mind, excuse me while I go run some holodeck simulations to sort this all out.
Ryan Britt is a longtime contributor to Tor.com.
This is in no way strange. Lots of people drink coffee first thing in the morning, and transition to tea as the day moves on. This is quite normal in much of the world. Its funny, Americans like specific beverages so we think “Picard likes Earl Gray”, but Picard is culturally French, so he likes his breakfast of coffee and pastry. This is consistent writing, IMHO
I prefer coffee in the morning, but tea in the afternoon.
That’s a beautifully turned reference to The Royal Tennenbaums in the opening paragraph, but I feel compelled to point out that “[person] likes A” does not necessarily imply “[person] does not like B”. A reasonable person can like both coffee and tea. Not Earl Grey, of course, which is bergamot-laden swill. But people get to like what they like and not like what they don’t like, whether it’s reasonable or not.
how Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes is forced to wear the deerstalker cap in Sherlock, because “it’s a Sherlock Holmes hat.” — I thought that was the first sign of trouble with that show (which ultimately devolved into a nearly unwatchable, self-indulgent, meta-mess). In that universe, why should there be any “Sherlock Holmes hat”? In that universe, Sherlock was not the 19th-century creation of Arthur Conan Doyle but a real 21st-century person. He and his contemporaries should have no more concept of a “Sherlock Holmes hat” than young Clark Kent in Man of Steel should have any concept of throwing a red towel over his shoulders as a superhero cape (at least that could be explained away as him being inspired by, I dunno, the Scarlet Pimpernel or the Three Musketeers or something).
As for the actual content of your article <G>, I enjoyed it as always, but you just KNOW what he’s going to order the first time we see him in Picard …. unless, I guess, the creative team decides having him order something else is a telltale sign that he’s not the confident Picard we knew from his TNG days.
And Worf doesn’t only drink prune juice. He loves blood wine as well. I’d bet he drinks most of his prune juice when he’s on duty.
I drink tea (preferably a breakfast tea but sometimes Earl Grey or Lady Grey) with breakfast, then coffee later in the afternoon. I am the anti-Picard, or “Dracip.”
Hopefully in Picard they do a clever twist on “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.” I’m reminded of the scene in Casino Royale when Bond orders a martini.
“Shaken or stirred?”
“Do I look like I give a damn?”
The scene gives us an unexpected twist on an old formula, plus tells us about Bond’s aggravation at that moment in the story.
@@.-@
The context for the “Sherlock Holmes Hat” was that in the previous episode (earlier in the same episode?), he (21st century Holmes) had take put on the hat for some reason and was photographed in it and it made the front page of the paper. It gained its “Sherlock Holmes Hat”-status from him in story, not as a reference applied to him because people knew who the character Sherlock Holmes was.
It was a meta-reference to earlier Holmes, but it was consistent in-world.
@8/ – you are no doubt right, but my recollection is that even when he was putting it on for the first time, everyone thought it was so cute and meta, which confused me. But I haven’t rewatched any of them in a while.
I think the green drink that Scotty and Picard were drinking in “Relics” was Aldebaran whiskey.
@1 This is in no way strange. Lots of people drink coffee first thing in the morning, and transition to tea as the day moves on.
– exactly. In fact, many twenty-first century French people love tea, particularly scented teas like Earl Grey (there are some very high quality tea shops and merchants in Paris, for instance).
Picard seems to have a slightly odd relationship with his Frenchness, of course, which is presumably part and parcel of the tension he has with his family, as we seen in “Tapestries” – it always seems curious that he is a Shakespeare fanboy*, but rarely refers to great French writers. I head canon the teenage Picard as cultivating an Anglophile persona, which eventually becomes second nature. The Earl Grey fits here, too – there seems to be a perception in the other European nations that it’s the quintessentially British tea, but in fact the British default is some variation on “English breakfast”,** drunk at all hours and referred to simply as “tea.”
But that doesn’t mean that Picard doesn’t actually like his Earl Grey (I’d like to think a starship captain would be emotionally mature enough to drink something he wanted, rather than something he was just putting on for effect!). And, given that breakfast habits tend to be quite deeply ingrained, it also makes sense that what he *really* wants for breakfast is the coffee and croissants he knew as a child.
* Yes, I know the Doylist/ extra-textual reasons for this – why hire Patrick Stewart and not do Shakespeare?
** Probably invented in Edinburgh, but that’s another matter entirely.
Worth pointing out that Kamala in “The Perfect Mate” is an empath, so while some of her knowledge of Picard’s likes comes from interrogating Data, she’d probably sense if he didn’t really like it.
“English Breakfast” tea, as usually available outside the UK, isn’t what British people drink for breakfast (or at all really), it’s a bit weak and insipid. Most Brits tend to just have one type of tea in the cupboard, usually either a supermarket brand, or PG Tips, or Yorkshire Tea etc, depending on taste. It’s sometimes referred to as ‘builders tea’ (although that implies it’s brewed very strong, and often with lots of milk and sugar, in a chipped or stained mug). I think you can get Yorkshire in many countries, so pick up a box if you want to know what ‘real’ English tea is like.
Personally, if I have Earl Grey or some other posh blend, it’s usually in the afternoon when I feel like a bit of a change from ‘normal’ tea.
As for what a fictional future Frenchman would drink? Probably coffee judging from my French mates.
Journalism!
I feel like just because he also likes coffee, it doesn’t mean he is pretending to like tea. There are people that drink both. I’m sure that throughout seven years on the ship, he actually drank a variety of beverages.
One thing with Picard is that I think his “Frenchness” was often overlooked, except when the script called for it. I think that being played by Patrick Stewart caused him to be Britishised to some extent. That’s of course even without speculation of how European cultures would change in almost 400 years, even on our own Earth, let alone in a universe where Earth had the Eugenics Wars in the 90s, etc.
As others have said, you can like both and one not necessarily more than the other. I personally don’t like coffee at all. Earl Grey is one of my favorites (the favorite before I discovered lady lavender – which is basically earl grey with lavender). I don’t drink it every time I have tea. It’s special to me so I save it for when I think “Earl Grey would be lovely right now”. Same with a London Fog (the ones I’ve had are basically earl grey latte with vanilla and lavender). I’ll drink it for special occasions and introduce people to it at every opportunity. But if I drank it every time I have tea it would lose that specialness. I like to think that’s how Picard treats Earl Grey. It’s special – his thinking juice or his reward drink, whatever.
When I found the I, CLAUDIUS drinking game, I noted to them that people should switch from red wine to tea, Earl Grey, hot, whenever Sejanus showed up, because Patrick Stewart, with hair, played him.
(also, when I drank tea on a regular basis, it was Darjeeling as strong as I could get it, in the mornings, but Earl Grey in the afternoons to mellow out.)
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